Ann Wilson, Heart's operatic voice, first sang because a stutter kept her quiet
A shy teenager with a stutter found her outlet in music. Ann Wilson went on to front Heart, one of the first hard rock bands led by women, which has sold over 35 million records and entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Her range earned her a reputation for operatic power.
Wilson was born in San Diego on June 19, 1950. Her father was a Marine Corps major, so the family moved often, living near bases in Panama and Taiwan before settling around Seattle in the early 1960s. Music was the constant. Her sister Nancy remembered Sundays of pancakes and opera, their father conducting in the living room, with records ranging from classical to Ray Charles and bossa nova. Ann finished Sammamish High School in Bellevue in 1968 and studied at Cornish College of the Arts.
In the early 1970s she joined a local group called White Heart, which became Hocus Pocus and then, in 1974, Heart. Nancy followed, the band relocated to Canada, and its debut Dreamboat Annie was recorded in Vancouver in 1975. Released in the US the next year, it produced the band's first American top 10 hit, Magic Man, which reached No. 9; the sisters had co-written it. These Dreams went to No. 1 in 1986. Heart has placed 29 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and landed top 10 albums in four different decades.
Her side projects are varied. The sisters opened a Seattle studio, Bad Animals, in the mid-1980s and formed the Lovemongers, who covered Led Zeppelin for the 1992 film Singles. Ann sang on Alice in Chains' EP Sap, toured with Alan Parsons in a 2001 Beatles tribute, and released her first solo album, Hope & Glory, on September 11, 2007. At the Kennedy Center in December 2012 the sisters performed Stairway to Heaven before the surviving members of Led Zeppelin.
Her private life has been hard. Bullied as a child over her weight, she later faced pressure from executives and bandmates to slim down, suffered panic attacks, and had gastric band surgery in 2002. She has been sober since 2009. A family assault case in 2016 strained the sisters' relationship and put Heart on hiatus until 2019. In 2024 she was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery and preventive chemotherapy.
Source: Ann Wilson
